Photo: Contributed
A Kelowna film production company is off to the Oscars of the automotive film and television industry in London next month.
Plia Film Productions’ The Curators is one of five finalists for the best documentary short at the International Motor Film Awards, which will be held Sept. 6 in the England capital.
The 13-minute documentary is a collaboration between Plia and Motor Werke, a high-performance auto repair centre. Motor Werke owner Chris Germana is the documentary’s executive producer, while Plia’s Stefan Matis is the filmmaker who put it all together.
“This is a film that you don’t have to be a car lover to appreciate it,” Matis said. “I’ve had people say, ‘I’m not a car person, but I actually was profoundly affected by that film’ or they learned something new. In a time where cars are becoming more detached and more emotionless, it’s a great commentary on nostalgia and culture. You don’t have to be a car lover to appreciate it. There’s something for everybody.”
The Curators highlights five vintage car enthusiasts showing how the vehicles they love embody memories, nostalgia and eras gone by. It is about “the idea of taking something that is on its way out and resurrecting it,” Germana said in a press release. “It is really cool and really gratifying for us as a team, a shop, a business and watching what (the film) does for the owners of the cars.”
Matis and his wife will travel to London for the awards show, where the documentary will be up against four other docs that were filmed in Nepal, China, Mexico and England. The awards show consistently attracts internationally renowned studios like Netflix and Top Gear.
“There’s some great stuff,” Matis said. “We’re competing against other filmmakers, independent productions or top agencies. There’s a London-based agency that does a lot of work for Jaguar Land Rover, so we’re competing against some of their films. It’s world competition, so you’re against some of the best. It’s good, though. It ups your game.”
Matis had done plenty of work with Germana and Motor Werke, where some of the vehicles in the documentary were being restored, but they were looking to do something different this time around. Filming took place over most of 2017 and early 2018.
“We’ve done a lot of videos for him, and we just said, ‘Let’s do something bigger. Let’s do a short documentary’ with the intent of putting it in festivals and create a long-form piece of media that really espoused the value his company has,” Matis said.
The Curators can be seen in its entirety here.
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